On 15 Jun 2014, at 22:16, meekerdb wrote:
On 6/14/2014 11:42 PM, LizR wrote:
On 15 June 2014 01:54, <[email protected]> wrote:
I have not attempted to correlate my theory with the thinking of
Plato and
Aristotle. I would be happy to discuss this with you (my cell phone
number is 858-353-0997) or to consider your specific thoughts as to
how my
theory relates to the thinking of these fellows.
"Aristotelianism" is philosophical shorthand (so to speak) for
theories which assume that matter/energy and space/time are
"primitive", which means they cannot be explained by anything
simpler. Aristotle thought that all that existed were "atoms and
the void"
No, although that's what Bruno implies. Aristotle believed in
substances which had inherent properties including teleological
propensities (air rises, stone fall). He denied that a vacuum was
possible. It was Democritus and Epicurus that hypothesized atoms
and void.
The point is that he believed in physical substances.
which is still roughly what "materialist" scientists think (Brent
may disagree with this, but from what I've read this appears to be
the tacit assumption of the majority of physicists).
I'd say "working hypothesis" - but why not? They're doing physics.
The evidence for this view is mainly that it appears self-evidently
true!
I think that's a very limited view. It has only been "self-evident"
for few hundred years -
I think that even a cat find evident that there is milk, there, and I
am pretty sure the cat believe in some primitive substance, even if he
is not capable to acknowledge such a fact.
and only among a small segment of the world's population. Even on
this list some argue that there must be some extra magic in humans
and they can't be *just* matter.
But with comp the point becomes that eventually "primitive matter" is
just all magic by itself.
"Platonism" is shorthand for theories which assume that the
universe is in some sense a reflection of some hidden underlying
'perfect forms" - the modern take on this, due to Max Tegmark and
others, is that these perfect forms are mathematical structures. I
don't pretend to know what this would mean in practice, although A.
Garret Lisi attempted to produce a TOE based on this idea (however,
this hasn't stood up to scrutiny). Tegmark has suggested that the
evidence for this view is that over the last 500 or so years, maths
has been the "royal road to physical explanations" - there is
nothing in physics which isn't maths plus what he calls "surplus
baggage" - an interpretation of some underlying maths. Whether this
has ontological significance is still unknown.
And it depends a lot on what you think about mathematics; whether
it's just a precise and and strictly logical subset of language or
whether it's really real ur-stuff.
It is neither. It is a bunch of truth though. Nothing in math is
stuffy. "Stuffy", like hard, soft, smelly, touchable belongs to the
mathematical imagination of numbers (assuming comp and all is well),
no doubt helped by long and deep (linear) histories.
Bruno
Brent
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